|
Every soul that knows its history is aware, also, that its
movement, unthwarted, is not that of an outgoing line; its
natural course may be likened to that in which a circle turns not
upon some external but on its own centre, the point to which it
owes its rise. The soul's movement will be about its source; to
this it will hold, poised intent towards that unity to which all
souls should move and the divine souls always move, divine in
virtue of that movement; for to be a god is to be integral with
the Supreme; what stands away is man still multiple, or beast.
Is then this "centre" of our souls the Principle for which we are
seeking?
We must look yet further: we must admit a Principle in which all
these centres coincide: it will be a centre by analogy with the
centre of the circle we know. The soul is not a circle in the
sense of the geometric figure but in that it at once contains the
Primal Nature [as centre] and is contained by it [as
circumference], that it owes its origin to such a centre and
still more that the soul, uncontaminated, is a self-contained
entity.
In our present state- part of our being weighed down by the body,
as one might have the feet under water with all the rest
untouched- we bear- ourselves aloft by that- intact part and, in
that, hold through our own centre to the centre of all the
centres, just as the centres of the great circles of a sphere
coincide with that of the sphere to which all belong. Thus we are
secure.
If these circles were material and not spiritual, the link with
the centres would be local; they would lie round it where it lay
at some distant point: since the souls are of the Intellectual,
and the Supreme still loftier, we understand that contact is
otherwise procured, that is by those powers which connect
Intellectual agent with Intellectual Object; this all the more,
since the Intellect grasps the Intellectual object by the way of
similarity, identity, in the sure link of kindred. Material mass
cannot blend into other material mass: unbodied beings are not
under this bodily limitation; their separation is solely that of
otherness, of differentiation; in the absence of otherness, it is
similars mutually present.
Thus the Supreme as containing no otherness is ever present with
us; we with it when we put otherness away. It is not that the
Supreme reaches out to us seeking our communion: we reach towards
the Supreme; it is we that become present. We are always before
it: but we do not always look: thus a choir, singing set in due
order about the conductor, may turn away from that centre to
which all should attend: let it but face aright and it sings with
beauty, present effectively. We are ever before the Supreme- cut
off is utter dissolution; we can no longer be- but we do not
always attend: when we look, our Term is attained; this is rest;
this is the end of singing ill; effectively before Him, we lift a
choral song full of God.
|
|